One remarkable circumstance in respect to the operations of this famous mercantile house, and to which their great success may in some degree be attributed, is that they pay as a rule very low wages, but liberal commissions. Thus masters of ships belonging to them, and ranging from 500 to 1000 tons, receive no more than $25 per month on voyages which extend from one to three years out and home; but over and above this, they receive 3 per cent. on the net profits of the venture... The profits on their European goods are very great, insomuch as a strict regulation exists among them all that to no person whatsoever, including the servants of the firm, are they permitted to sell any article of trade at less than 100 per cent. advance on the cost price, exclusive of freight and commission. The manager for Messrs. Godeffroy, in the choice of his employés on the various isles of the Pacific, takes little account of nationality; many of his agents in the outlying groups are English or American, as are most of the mariners who have run wild in these seas during past years, and so got a thorough knowledge of the native language and habits. Theodore Weber is a very shrewd man of the world, although young, and the great development of the Godeffroy house is largely owing to his enterprise. He had but three questions usually to put to a man who sought employment of him: 'Can you speak the language? Can you live among the natives without quarrelling with them? Can you keep your mouth shut?' i.e., concerning your masters' business when you meet with white men. To a man who can return satisfactory answers to these queries, Godeffroy never refuses employment. He gets the means of transport to those isles upon which he is to be at home; everything necessary to build a stone house, and a stock-of-trade to put into it. They pay no salaries ; they simply trust a man with so much goods, and expect of him,

within a reasonable time, so much produce at a fixed rate. There is another point upon which they lay great weight: 'Have a woman of your own, no matter what island you take her from; for a trader without a wife is in eternal hot water.' Lastly, they impose the condition: Give no assistance to missionaries either by word or deed (beyond what is demanded of you by common humanity); but wheresoever you may find them, use your best influence with the natives to obstruct and exclude them.' It would occupy too much space for me to explain the reasons of this last condition; it is enough to say, that it has originated on very simple grounds. Throughout the Pacific for the past twenty-five years, there has been a constant struggle for the mastery between missionaries and merchants, each being intensely jealous of the influence over native affairs obtained by the other. Merchants make the greatest profits out of savages, for the reason that savages are content to sell their produce for blue beads, tomahawks and tobacco. When these savages are brought under the influence of the missionaries, they are instructed to demand payment in piece goods wherewith to clothe themselves, and in coin for the purpose of subscribing to the funds of the missionary societies. This reduces the profits of the merchants, who bitterly resent such interference. Moreover, the English missionaries were for years the grand opponents of the Messrs. Godeffroy in the matter of Bolivian coin, and although the firm came off victors, they have never forgotten or forgiven their ancient antagonists.

Another singular feature of the Godeffroy system, so essentially peculiar in many respects, was the sending of their vessels to sea from their headquarters at Samoa with sealed orders, so that no one on board knew positively where they were bound for, until in a certain latitude the master opened his instruc

tions in the presence of his mate. Furthermore, they shipped no man as mate who was not fully competent to fulfil the duties of captain in case of need, and they did not insure their ships. It has been a matter of conjecture with many what could have been the object of Messrs. Godeffroy in purchasing such a vast tract of land as Samoa. I have enjoyed peculiar facilities for knowing their exact intentions. Very much of their land is so elevated as to possess a mild temperature well suited to the European constitution. It consists of fertile plateaux, anciently inhabited and cultivated. Their idea was to subdivide it among German emigrants, to whom they would lease it in small lots with the option of purchase, Godeffroy to provide means of transport and all necessaries to begin with. It was proposed that the settlers should cultivate corn, coffee, tobacco, cinchona, and other produce which had been scientifically and successfully experimented upon, while the low lands in the vicinity of the sea-beach were to be devoted to the growth of cocoa, palms, sugar-cane, rice, jute, etc., by the labour of Chinese, who were intended to be brought over in families and established as tenants on a small scale, so as to do away entirely with the idea of servitude. The Franco-German war prevented the realisation of this scheme at the time intended. The results, there can be no doubt, would have been very great and certainly beneficial to Messrs. Godeffroy, the white settlers, and the influence of the German Empire. It is to be hoped that the idea, which they have been compelled to abandon, may be acted on by our own countrymen at no distant date. The Government of the then North German Confederation regarded the matter with paternal interest, and several personal interviews and a voluminous correspondence passed between the senior partner of the house of Godeffroy and Herr (now Prince) von Bismarck, who had been great friends in youth,

and who did not hesitate to lend his aid in furthering this new field for German advancement. The matter had not been long under discussion, when the approval of the Prussian authorities took a practical shape. Plans, prepared upon the ground by a surveyor of the locality intended for a settlement, were laid before the Government of Berlin; a programme of the course of colonisation to be adopted was drawn up; extraordinary powers were given to the German Consul at Samoa; grants of arms of precision from the Royal arsenals were made for the protection of the settlement, and the Hertha (the first, it is said, of the continental ironclads of Europe to pass through the Suez Canal) received orders to proceed from China to Samoa, to settle all disputes between the Germans and the chiefs of that group, and by a judicious display of power to prepare the way for the first detachment of military settlers, who were to leave Hamburg as soon as her commander should have submitted his report.

At the same time the Messrs. Godeffroy had completed arrangements with their representative in Valparaiso to ship to Samoa a number of mules and their Chilian drivers, for the purpose of opening a regular communication between the north and south coasts of Upolu, over the great central dividing range. Orders were also given to the manager at Cochin to despatch several Chinese families who had resided for many years at that place in the employment of the Hamburg house, in order to systematically commence upon the Samoan land the cultivation of rice and other Oriental products.

This was a well-conceived project, but owing to the march of events in Europe it collapsed before it was put into operation. The Hertha was countermanded in the Indian Sea, France having declared war against Germany. Hamburg was ruin

ously blockaded by the French fleet. Messrs. Godeffroy, with all their business knowledge and amateur statesmanship, severely felt the effects of the war and the blockade from which not even the patronage of the man of blood and iron could extricate them. By giving his powerful support to the well-conceived plan of a South Sea Island Company with an Imperial guarantee, Bismarck did his utmost for the firm, but by a majority of sixteen the Berlin Reichstag refused to set Humpty Dumpty up again.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE CAREER OF BULLY HAYES.'

ONE of the most respected of the inhabitants of Apia is Mrs. Hayes, the widow of the notorious Bully Hayes,' perhaps the last of the pirates of the Pacific. No sketch of Coral Lands would approach completeness if it did not give some account of this man's exploits, as for more than twenty years he was the terror of all honest men in that wide region. His first appearance at the islands of Hawaii was in 1858, when he and his first officer were put ashore from the ship Orestes. Hayes was at that time accompanied by his wife. In all his travels he used to be accompanied by a female companion of some kind or other, whom he picked up and dropped as the fancy took him. He left Honolulu in the early part of 1859 for San Francisco, and some two months afterwards he appeared at Kahului, on Maui, in command of a brig, bound to New Caledonia, and while negotiating for a load of cattle, he was taken in charge by the late Mr. Treadway, then sheriff of Maui, for violating the revenue laws in entering a closed port. The captain was highly indignant with his first officer for telling him that it was not necessary to enter at the Lahaina